The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Graffiti artist David Choe tags Facebook's new campus

January 9, 2012 | 7:08
pm

Celebrated graffiti artist David Choe has once again tagged Facebook.

Choe became infamous in Silicon Valley for allegedly being commissioned to spray-paint sexual graphics on the walls of Facebook's first Palo Alto office in 2005 by the company's founding president, Sean Parker. (If that really happened, though, it has been airbrushed out of the official Facebook history). Choe painted less -- ahem -- colorful murals for Facebook's next digs in 2007, this time at the request of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. When Facebook outgrew its office and moved again, it carved Choe's artwork out of the walls and took the pieces to the new place, where they were proudly hung.

So it's not much of a surprise that Choe has christened Facebook's latest address on Hacker Way in Menlo Park. Zuckerberg invited Choe to the new campus and even showed him around before Choe flexed his artistic muscles on Facebook's walls again. He painted a large blue mural in the lobby of one building and tagged the walls elsewhere with a variety of pieces, some of his own inspiration and some suggested by Facebook staffers, who stayed late Friday to "hack out" the office with spray paint and chalk.

Choe's Facebook graffiti art was re-created for the set of the film "The Social Network" by two of his friends, Rob Sato and Joe To.